There is never a day when we don't discover something new in the forest. It's only one element, that of pleasant surprise, that draws us into the ravine for a daily tramp on forest trails with our two little dogs. People largely fail to understand the benefits of being in a green, wild space, to the human psyche. It is balm to the soul, serene, restful and a source of both entertainment and information about nature and our place within the great out-of-doors.

Of course, Irving and I were always inclined to green spaces. Throughout our lives we've actively and deliberately sought them out, as fulfilling, pleasurable destinations. From the time we were inseparable as children together, accessing green landscapes was as vital to us as visiting local libraries. We just took it for granted that our lives gained quality from that exposure.

Well, yes, we also spent time with friends. Attended community events like weekly dance nights. And together explored the city where we lived, Toronto. When we were married, our honeymoon destination was a lodge not far from Algonquin Park-- Cedar Grove Lodge. There was a lake on the lodge property, and cabins interspersed among mature trees. And a large building where meals were served. It was a brief idyll for us, and we were to visit Algonquin Park countless times over the years.

Now, at our age, we're grateful to have a natural forest in close walking distance of our house. Access to the forest represents a large quality-of-life quotient for us, as it does for our little pups, Jackie and Jillie. They're acutely aware of our daily routines and know precisely when it's time -- although the time differs from day to day-- for all of us to set out for our daily ramble through the forest trails.

Today we saw cinquefoil in bloom for the first time. And noted an abundance of wild blackberry flowers, promising a huge crop of berries this summer. Before concluding our circuit, we went by the forest meadow, and there were huge colonies of buttercups, daisies, flowering clover and thimbleberry shrubs in bloom. Early this morning the house interior was dark in the throes of a morning rain. But the clouds did clear, and the sun arrived to dry the rain.

The garden was delighted with this turn of events. Everything is thriving; the proper elements all cooperating resulting in bright colours and healthy plants; form, texture and nuanced colour in abundance. Each time we glance out the doors to the outside, the garden landscape captures our eyes; it's like standing before a beautiful painting.

Today is my Irving's birthday. He's finally 'caught up' with me. I'm just a tad more than a month older than him, but I don't pull rank. When we were young, he lied to me, told me he was 15 and he wasn't yet 14. On his birthday I spoke with his mother when she answered the telephone in a call I made to him, and she responded to something I said about his birthday by telling me no, not at all, this was his 14th birthday. 

When we were young in the 1950s, children used to 'date' at a younger age. Mostly belonging to groups  that would meet at parochial community centers that would hold dances on weekend evenings. I actually met him when a mutual friend invited him to a birthday party. My 14th birthday party, in fact, at my parents' house. When I saw him I 'recognized' him immediately; he was the boy I had always dreamed of.

It took little time before he began coming around regularly, and we'd go out for long walks to area parks, through the streets around the community, to the public library. And to the community centre dances where we'd meet up with our friends. He went to Oakwood Collegiate Institute and played on their football team while I was at the High School of Commerce and he was in a grade above me, despite his age.

Neither his family nor mine saw any need for us to continue formal schooling. Both figured that high school prepared us for a working life. We had both worked in factories during summer holidays. The summer I was informed I wouldn't be returning to school for grade 11 left me speechless. I found work in a typing pool, while he continued school for another two years. 

Now, seventy years later, we've grown old together. And a lot of life has been lived side-by-side in the process. Sometimes we wonder at the swiftness of the passage of the years. And sometimes we think back to all the times we've shared, not the least of which was raising three children who are now themselves beginning to enter their 'elder' years.

So we're both now 84 years old, and life holds us together in its gentle grasp. When we were 17 we wanted to be together forever, and thought of eloping, though it's doubtful we would have known how to proceed toward legal marriage. Finally, we informed our parents and they 'persuaded' us to wait. They gave their permission for us to be come 'engaged', and plans went forward for a June wedding when we attained age 18.

Today is Irving's birthday, a day no different than any other we've had together. A little merrier, perhaps, quips coming more readily, along with the hugs. As far as our two puppies are concerned it's a day like any other, a day that promises they'll have the pleasure of a long hike through forest trails on a perfect winter day of mild temperatures, no wind, and full sun in a  wide blue sky.

We were amenable; when they invited us out for a  tramp through the ravine, we agreed, and we set off a bit earlier in the afternoon than we generally do. Nothing quite serves the function of relaxation and leisure pleasure as does a stroll through a forest, observing the changing landscape where in some areas conifers predominate, and others host more deciduous trees. Where acquired snow through a number of snowstorms hump the landscape with a thick coverlet of gleaming white.

And where scintillating rays of the sky-mounting sun flash through the forest canopy illuminating the tree tops and shooting through gaps between trees to reach the forest floor where an exchange between the frozen surface and the warmth-filled rays reach a compromise; briefly kissing, neither assuming pressure on the other. A little like marriage.

We've been using facial tissues like nobody's business, not that anyone would want to know. We haven't had colds in years, either of us, but come the winter months those facial tissues are indispensable. (A factor of age, weather and the effect of medications.) And we go through them at an alarming rate. Such luxury, to be using a tissue and discarding it and plucking another then another out of the box; it seems inexhaustible. And we go through box after box. Certainly beats washing handkerchiefs.

 When I was a child close to a century ago -- yes, that long, say up to the time when I was 8 years of age, which would be 75 years ago -- a roomer in the house where my parents rented a flat consisting of a tiny kitchen and two bedrooms, and everyone shared a bathroom, the home owners, my parents and their then-three children and the single man who lived in the front bedroom -- he once casually asked me if I'd like to have the Kleenex box he was discarding.

I was delighted, a coloured box and I could have it. Notably, I had few toys of my own, and the cardboard box took on the aspect of a treasure. I'd had the mistaken impression that it wasn't empty and it would be all my own. I dreamed how wonderful it would be to have that box intact with the tissues still in it. Wouldn't that be something to have. Of course I wouldn't use the tissues, just proudly own them, my very own. 

Now, I have all the tissues I need for practical purposes, and more. Strange, the associations we make in our memory, connecting the past with the present.

We missed our ravine walk yesterday. Just too cold, windy and cold and windy and cold and windy and we thought we'd give it a pass. Today, though a busy day, out we went. The morning temperature of =21C had warmed up to -12C in the ravine by mid-afternoon and out we went. The sun is so hot now in its graduation from early to mid- to late winter it sits  at a different angle in the sky and we can recognize longer daylight hours and a warming sun. So warm that though the temperature is well below freezing, the sun's rays melt the snow on the metal canopy over our deck. Drip, drip, drip, leaving of course frozen water which is to say, ice, on the floor of the deck.

The sun's warmth goes quite a way to ameliorating the extreme cold. The creek at the bottom of the ravine is now thoroughly frozen over. We watched this afternoon as a German Shepherd seemed quite puzzled enthusiastically racing down the bank to reach the creek then seemingly disconsolate that it had disappeared. Not the least bit impressed that he could now walk on water, he obviously wanted to wade into water.

The blaze of the sun in the wide blue ocean of sky is mesmerizing when viewed through the screen of the forest trees, or seeing the canopy lit up in a living orange, caressed by the sun. We would be as nothing without the presence of the sun. It brings and it sustains life. And right now it is slowly but in steady increments lengthening daylight hours and warming this cold winter atmosphere.

Yesterday turned out an unusually quiet, contemplative, sombre day for us. We didn't much feel like doing anything. On the other hand, we did talk about the past, about how things were so many years ago when we were young, and about the people we knew and shared many happy hours with. One of those people, we learned early in the day, was no longer in the land of the living. We had been informed some short while ago that she had been hospitalized and the end result was -- the end.

So we talked and we talked, and though the memories were fond, the emotions they elicited were not bright and cheerful. We went about our day quietly. And so as a kind of solace I turned to what I know best; how to prepare a meal that might inspire a little joy. Not all that difficult to achieve for a goal that would lighten the evening prospects of a sad day.

Since I had some bread dough resting in the refrigerator it was a no-brainer to plan to bake  bread of some kind, and croissants laced with sesame seed and Cheddar cheese came to mind. Rolling out the dough and working with the ingredients involved to achieve a goal has a calming effect. The actions are familiar and deliberate and soothing. And the fragrance that wafts through the kitchen, making its way through the rest of the house has its own calming effect, whetting the appetite and lowering the burden of sadness to a more tolerable level.

Even before I did that, though, there were several competing fragrances, one of which was the chicken soup that always accompanies our Friday night meal. This time. for dessert I thought to bake light and airy cupcakes and chose coconut-lime, a quick and easy recipe that can be altered in so many ways to produce other types of cupcakes. This one needed a grated and juiced lime. And ingredients including 2/3 cup each granulated sugar and Becel margarine to which I added two large eggs, 1/4 cup sour cream, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, most of the lime zest and all of its juice. Beaten in intervals with 1-1/4 cup cake and pastry flour, 1 tsp.baking powder, 1/4 tsp.salt and a cup of desiccated coconut. I used the remainder of the lime zest in a simple butter icing.

Food, its preparation and consumption, is a guaranteed comforter for our emotional beings, both a sensual pleasure and a necessity for survival. Jackie and Jillie, our two little poodles agree with great enthusiasm. 

This morning the cold that greeted us read -15C on the outdoor thermometer, a tad 'milder' than yesterday's -17C, but the sharp, biting wind that distinguished yesterday, was absent today when we all went out to the ravine for our afternoon tramp through the winter woods. Astonishingly, the thick clumps of snow captured on branches of trees and shrubbery in the forest remain intact. They are so hard packed that neither the warmth of sunrays that reach them haphazardly, or the wind that whips through the tree mass has been able to dislodge them.

The trails, once so deep and narrow in years past, now wide and flattened by the many booted feet that have been traversing them, were readily manoeuverable, no longer quite as slippery on the ascent/descents. That's the rare upside of having so many people descend these days on the ravine, as an escape within the community from COVID lockdown conditions. We heard a Pileated woodpecker off in the distance, as well as a nuthatch much closer by, among a small flock of chickadees. 

We were out quite a lengthy time, taking our trek at a leisurely pace, and stopping now and again to chat with friends our paths crossed. We were fortunate this afternoon -- it seems the cold disagrees with many people not accustomed to enjoying the brisk winter air in the great out-of-doors -- feel discouraged by the low temperature, leaving the ravine to we old-timers whom untoward weather conditions rarely are persuasive enough to forestall outings.

It was admittedly very cold. Even the slight breeze making it seem even colder. But moving along at a steady pace usually generates enough energy to keep warm, though bare faces do  tend to reflect the level of cold through pinched noses and rebellious red cheeks. But the wonderful blaze of the sun through the screen of the forest trees and the snow-puffed forest floor along with snow remaining on trees all make for an exquisitely lovely landscape.

 

Like the questionable quasi-sacred practices of mendicant monks and friars out to fatten their own pockets selling the Church-unsanctioned 'indulgences' to gullible Christians, we were made aware, as we sat along with young acquaintances, both Japanese and European, that we could access Buddhist prayers in an offering to the Temple's guests. We were seated at a long refectory-style table set in the Japanese style awaiting dinner and it was served by smiling young monks, tonsured and clad in attire common to figures of faith in any religion.

Given a piece of washi to write down the subject of our preferred prayer and whom it would benefit, the fee transferred, a sense of tranquil satisfaction washed over us, and we turned to the meal being presented, starting with a bowl of Miso soup on top of which floated a raw egg. 

We were in a Zen Buddhist temple, a compound set high on a prominence overlooking a small town. We would be staying there for several days. Later, in the evening, I would be seated on a small stool in a large chamber the focus of which was a pool, and this was a public bath. It was women's hour, and while on the stool I used a basin of clear, cool water and soap to thoroughly cleanse myself. It was only then that I could enter the pool and experience the comfort of the water's warmth, alongside another handful of women whose presence was sparse in the expansive pool.

We slept on futons that night, my husband and me. In the tiny chamber which was ours for the length of our stay, furnished as frugally and subtly artistically as only Zen Buddhism knows how to present, was a scroll, its legend in Katakana script, the brush strokes, fluid and casual, of a bird seated on a melon upon whose vine curling about the scroll sat other, smaller birds. Only a small, low table occupied the room where we were served tea as we sat on tatami mats.

We were there with a group we had joined, of young Japanese and their European counterparts, adventurers curious about other parts of the world, working as teachers of English at various schools and colleges. We were the oldest, the only married couple. Most of our trips as a group focused on hiking expeditions in forests outside the great sprawling city of Tokyo. To access those forests close to small towns and villages we had to take a combination of public transit; buses, trains, subways. My husband knew his way around. 

While at the Temple compound we took walks early in the morning just as mist began clearing under the influence of the intense sun. The most prominent path led from the temple complex down to the village, a walk of roughly a half-hour, though looking down at the village from the height of the Temple complex, it looked much closer. On the way, we would pass a part of the Temple complex where the monks were housed, and at that time of the morning the heavenly sound of a chorus of sacred music sung by a choir of quietly restrained voices followed us as we meandered along. It seemed otherwordly.

Much earlier, at the crack of dawn, we had the option of attending the first prayer of the day in a large chamber where monks and guests were seated on the floor on their haunches as the melodic, slow-paced, low-voiced prayers commenced. It takes a limber body to be seated for such a prolonged period in that respectful pose, attentive to the proceedings.

As we walked along, the two of us, enveloped in a feeling of having somehow managed to travel back in time to another era, certainly another country than that we were born to, immersed in another culture, we thought how quaint it was to see young tonsured, cassocked monks driving past, genially waving and smiling at  us, in their BMWs. 

We two wandered at leisure through the monastery's hill-sloped gardens along stone pathways lined with tiny Jizo statuettes. Some of them held children's toys, were dressed like infants. Jizo is a revered Bodhisattva, the patron saint of travellers, but perhaps more importantly the protector of the spirits of children who have died. The tiny statuettes were everywhere displayed, hundreds of them. It was not by any means the only place where we saw them, poignant and appealing, the champions of tiny lost souls, particularly children who had died prematurely.

The monastery was a place of quiet tranquility. I recall walking through a corridor linking buildings fully open to the out-of-doors, fully similar to medieval churches' cloisters, how much the landscape and the buildings themselves made me feel as though I was living in a similar landscape I inferred from the Name of the Rose. But while living there, in Japan, it was the great novel by Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, that made the greatest impression for the monastery, like the novel in all likelihood reflected the medieval world in the modern era.

A Memory Jog

No question we were planning to get out early into the ravine this morning. The weather update was unequivocal; 40% chance of afternoon thunderstorms and the humid high temperature to be 32C. It was well on its way to that peak even by 7:30 this morning, so after setting the table for breakfast, off we went with Jackie and Jillie. Something had spooked Jackie before we left the house and instead of snapping up the little squares of cheese he usually shares with Jillie he leaped onto my lap for comfort. He gets a little squirrely at times. I usually think of him as being in very fragile mental health; sharp sounds or unexpected movements can set him off into a tizzy of fear.

As we swept up the street and into the ravine, he recovered his equilibrium, and seemed absolutely normal. A big relief. I can't forget the ordeal we went through with him last fall when it took months before he began behaving normally. He was fearful of everything at that time, and turned our lives inside out, refusing to eat, forgetting his manners and generally reverting to a tentative state of puppyhood. He would constantly lift one of his back legs to 'skip' while walking, he seemed to shrink at being touched. Our veterinarian could find nothing physically awry. Jackie wanted comfort in being held, and when we were finally able to get him back walking in the ravine he would sometimes stop and ask to be carried. I shudder at the prospect of a repeat.

He was fine by the time my husband began picking ripe thimbleberries and doling them out before we swooped into the forest descent. A woman passing with her Yellow Lab was curious and wanted to know what thimbleberries were. My husband invited her to try some for herself and she declared them delicious, had never known of them before. She was new to the ravine, just recently discovered it, and was inordinately pleased with the opportunities it presents as a recreational treasure. Unlike us living in close proximity, she had to drive a short distance to arrive at the forest but is thankful for its presence.

As we moved on, down the hill and up another, we were met by the sight of a mushroom colony over an old decaying tree trunk, knowing that the mushrooms would be gone again a day later. They keep erupting out of the forest floor and have done so for years, renewing their presence briefly then dying back again. And when we passed over the second of the four bridges we would pass through in total during our circuit today, we noted that there were seeds left unconsumed by the squirrels that had used the top rail of the second bridge as a surface to break apart this year's plentiful spruce cones. Painstakingly extracting the seed pods from the structure of the disassembled cones, the seeds are pried out and eaten, but we assumed that this little squirrel had had enough and the leftovers were testament to that.

We also came across a couple on the trail whom we haven't seen for years. They were, at one time, regular trail walkers and we would see them frequently with their little dog decades ago. About twenty years ago regular hikers became aware of the presence of a dog left in the forest by someone. That someone had left the dog's crate, a few blankets, a bowl of water and one of kibble, and abandoned the dog. No one knew of the presence of the crate and it was only, it was assumed, many days later that the dog was first noticed. He could be heard barking. And he would not allow anyone to get near him. It took awhile before the presence of the crate was discovered.

This couple, he a retired communications specialist with the Canadian Armed Forces who had been stationed at Lahr, Germany long after the Second World War, and the German woman he met there and married, made it their special focus to win the trust of that poor dog who would often be seen at a distance wandering about the trails, aloof and frightened. They did just that, gaining the dog's trust with patience and kindness, feeding it and waiting for it to relax in their presence until they were able to leash it and take it home with them.

After which, whenever they would be seen in the ravine, the 'lost' dog would be with them and their original dog. The two dogs became fast companions and that poor abandoned dog enjoyed the final years of its life with people who loved him. Such kind, compassionate people can only deserve the community's admiration and gratitude.

When we returned from our morning ramble in the ravine with Jackie and Jillie yesterday and were walking about the garden, one of our next-door neighbours warned us of the presence of a groundhog in her garage. She did that knowing our little dogs on becoming aware of the presence of another animal would rush headlong toward it. And groundhogs are equipped by nature to really look after themselves with a daunting degree of ferocity.

Shortly afterward, she came over when we were in the house to update the situation. It wasn't a groundhog after all that had decided to take up squatter's rights in her garage. Her husband, on viewing it initially had informed her it was a groundhog, but it was really a tiny chipmunk. We all had a good laugh. They've had problems in the past with raccoons and squirrels nesting in their attic, and it cost them a good penny to have a pest control firm humanely solve the problem for them, waiting until the young were old enough to be moved by their mother in spring, and then closing up the tiny portals through which they had entered.

It made me think of the time years ago when we were out in British Columbia visiting with our youngest son and we decided to do some alpine camping. It took us hours to ascend the peak we had chosen and we had struggled up some pretty demanding terrain carrying our backpacks, in the process. When we finally reached as close to the summit as we felt comfortable with, where we could pitch our tent (moderately sloped) and draw water to purify from a small lake below being filled by a melting glacier nearby, I happened to be the first up. And exhausted, I glanced over to the left and saw a small bear looking back down at me.

I shouted out to my husband and son, and my son hurried up, took a look and had a good laugh. Perspective sometimes is everything, not just in how one perceives what is said, but what one sees. This was no bear cub, but a marmot, a furry brown resident of the alpine heights. Later, we came across tiny picas as well, sounding their sharp-voiced little alarms.

This wasn't the only time I'd mistaken one animal for another. Even further back in time we three had been hiking a long forest path in the Gatineau Hills, and once again I had happened to run ahead of the others. This time I stopped when there was a commotion in the bush to my left, so I looked over and suddenly saw a very large brown dog beginning to emerge, wondering where his human companion was. Until I realized this was no dog, but a bear, and swiftly retraced my steps to meet up with the laggards, leaving the no-doubt-confused bear well behind.

No marmots, bears or groundhogs seen today in the ravine, when we pushed off into the cool confines of the forest on yet another exhaustingly-hot day. Not quite as early as previous mornings, because we stayed in bed a little longer, and Jackie and Jillie kindly taking pity on us, allowed us to. Earlier they had leaped raucously off the bed barking in their usual frantic way when they had heard the municipal garbage-collection trucks go by, then resumed their place back in bed and we all went back to sleep.

We admired the mass profusion of bright pink thimbleberries lighting up the green foliage of the massively growing plants this year, then delved into the ravine, the trails dark with the moisture they had lapped up through a series of heavy thunderstorms yesterday afternoon. For the most part no one else happened along when we were out save for one person we've known for years but haven't seen in many months. And because we were glad to see one another, we lingered and spoke together for quite awhile before shoving on again; one of those serendipitous little events that brighten a day.

There is one area in the forest with a colony of Partridgeberry and I glanced over as we passed it, the tiny foliage luxuriantly dark green and glistening with drops left over from yesterday. And there were tiny white trumpet shaped blooms that would later, much later, become bright red berries which presumably birds other than partridges now eat in season, because we haven't seen partridges around for many a year in the ravine.

Later, after breakfast, when we were out in the garden and I was doing a bit of tidying up, a neighbour who lives on a different street happened by, and she and my husband embarked on a long conversation. Jackie and Jillie are always excited to see people they know, tending to leap around them, waiting to be noticed and to be petted. They've finally come to understand that they're not permitted to run out on the road, but still need reminders.

This woman in her earlier professional years had worked as an OR nurse. Which left me baffled when I briefly joined them in conversation, noting how near her preferred proximity was to us. Each time my husband or I shuffled off slightly to create more of a distance, she would take it as a signal to approach closer. Why it is that we remain loathe to frankly inform someone that this makes us uncomfortable is beyond me. In hesitating to hurt someone's feelings, we sacrifice our own security. And that's an event that definitely doesn't make for a better day.

We finally saw a densely-dark, velvety black clear sky last night, sequinned with stars and a full moon. And when we awoke this morning the house was brightly illuminated, the sun warming the atmosphere inside and out, heralding, along with the paeon-pealing cardinal in the backyard, a beautiful summer day.

At this time of year, approaching June 5, we would normally not be at home, sleeping in our own bed. We've made it somewhat of a tradition to celebrate our wedding anniversary together with our puppies on a hiking holiday, travelling to the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, a huge natural area of mountains, forests, lakes and hiking trails we've been long familiar with.

For as long back as we can recall, our anniversary would be spent -- or at least the week surrounding it -- on various familiar and unfamiliar trails traipsing through forest landscapes. Much earlier yet, we would be there, in that landscape with our children when they were in their teens, and most of the trails we took back then were to access the summits of mountains in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, a superbly awesome natural area that offered us the kind of family adventure we all valued.

Well, it was not to be this year. This year broke the chain of our personal family tradition. With the threat of infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, closed borders, social distancing, and extreme care to avoid potentially hazardous locations, we've remained at home. There was no other option. Truth is, it hardly matters. We've so much to be grateful for, in celebrating our 65th wedding anniversary.

We have one another, and that speaks to the meaning of our lives. We live in comfort and security in the finest country of the world. And the quality of our lives at the present time can be viewed in the fact that we have ease of access to an urban forest located within a ravine which geological presence ensured that it would be maintained as a natural treasure, with no threat feasible for urban development.

So, as we do every day, we were out enjoying the fine weather, good health, companionship and pleasure with two little companion dogs, on forest trails this afternoon. And we'll do the same tomorrow, the day 65 years later that we married, on June 5, 1955, a beautiful spring day, in Toronto where we both then lived. We were young to marry by today's standards, at 18.

As teens we danced to songs that lamented "They tried to tell us we're too young, too young to really be in love"... And that was true, even then. They were wrong, we were right.